A large cellulose supplier, part of a privately held US industrial group, with a heavy-industry heritage in pulp and fibre. Its customers operate in a very different environment: fast-moving consumer goods, where the end consumer ultimately determines success.
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Client #2
Client #2
The Situation
The client's largest FMCG customer delivered a blunt assessment: late deliveries, poor quality, uncompetitive pricing, no proactivity, and no understanding of the end consumer. A US$100 million deal was at risk. The client had the willingness to act — but struggled to understand what their customer actually needed them to change.
The Mission
FIVIS was brought in to activate the voice of the customer inside the organisation. The client understood pulp and fibre better than almost anyone, but that expertise had been built for an industrial world, not for the fast-moving consumer environment in which its FMCG customer competed for a place on the shelf.
The gap was not one of capability but of perspective: the organisation had lost sight of the end consumer whose choices ultimately determined the value of everything it produced. The mission was to bridge that gap: to connect the client's heavy-industry heritage to the end-consumer reality its customer lived in every day, and to make that reality present in the decisions of the teams who had never had reason to think that far down the value chain.
WHAT WE DID
FIVIS introduced its customer-centricity approach to senior leadership first, then extended it across the commercial and operational teams responsible for the customer relationship. Each of the customer's complaints was mapped to a specific behaviour change, underpinned by a gap analysis, a concrete and time-bound action plan, and a single ambition for the organisation to align behind: to become the supplier of choice, not a provider by chance.
The Outcome
The relationship was renewed. The customer subsequently began allocating new business to the supplier, a deliberate decision that followed directly from the change in behaviour, and volumes doubled. A supplier the customer had been prepared to replace became one it chose to grow, extending the relationship across further regions.
The benefit did not end there. By applying the same customer-first mindset to its other customer accounts, the supplier grew its market share more widely.
US$100 million customer relationship saved.
Business relationship expanded into new geographies.
New customer focus leveraged to win business with other major customers.
